Insomniac Games - Company Overview

Company Overview

Insomniac was founded in 1994 as an independent video game developer and is now based in Burbank, California. Its initial game, an FPS called Disruptor for the PlayStation, was released on November 20, 1996, and received critical success. Since then, the company has released eight more games in two series (both created by the company) for PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 earning both critical and commercial success. After the company produced the first three Spyro the Dragon games, Universal Interactive Studios picked up the Spyro series while they moved on to A Girl With A Stick. They abandoned that project to develop the Ratchet & Clank series.

Brian Hastings suggested the Ratchet & Clank series. The first Ratchet & Clank was the first western-produced game bundled with PlayStation 2 in Japan, because it was the first western video game to make Japan's top 100 list.

The company was named one of the top 10 Best Small Companies to work for in America for 3 years in a row for their relaxed environment and flexible hours.

In 2003, a few of Insomniac's staff members left to create High Impact Games.

In 2006, Insomniac released an M-rated PlayStation 3 first-person shooter, very unlike its other works. Its name during production was I-8, but it was later renamed Resistance: Fall of Man. The game's futuristic weapons show the influence of Ratchet & Clank.

At the 2008 Game Developers Conference, they announced the "Nocturnal Initiative". This is a free wiki-based project designed to encourage the distribution of development technologies for use in other games. Shared technologies include some of those used in titles such as Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and Resistance 2.

In an interview with GameDaily BIZ in June 2008, Ted Price announced that Insomniac Games planned to open a sister studio in North Carolina. The new studio hired twenty-five to thirty new developers. The new studio opened in January 2009.

In Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, the player can visit an easter egg known as the "Insomniac Museum". This is located on the planets Dantopia (a reference to the late Dan Johnson) and Burbank (a reference to the company's location). The museum lets players find items, enemies, objects and conceptions that did not make it into the final game version. The museum adopts the actual layout of the company's offices.

On May 25, 2010 Insomniac Games announced a new franchise for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to be published by Electronic Arts, its first Xbox release. That game was originally called Overstrike before being renamed to Fuse.

Insomniac stated that it is working on multiple projects exclusively for PlayStation 3. These include Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One and Resistance 3, which were both announced on August 17, 2010 at Gamescom in Cologne. In March 2011, they announced the Insomniac Click division, which is dedicated to mobile gaming and Facebook games.

In January 2012, Price announced that Insomniac would no longer make Resistance games.

On March 2, 2012, Amazon France listed a "Ratchet & Clank HD Collection" on its website. On March 15, Sony officially confirmed that a Ratchet & Clank Trilogy would be released on June 29 in Europe, and August 28 in North America as the Ratchet & Clank Collection. It was to be distributed by Idol Minds. The HD Collection includes the first three games, each running at 60fps and in 3D. A Crack in Time supports up to eight players.

On May 30, 2012, Price announced that a new Ratchet and Clank game was in production named Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, later known as Q-Force, to be released on PlayStation Network in Fall 2012.